Prezcon's Scythe tourney will be Tuesday, Feb. 21.http://www.prezcon.com/In addition to plaques for placing, the winner will get a set of Scythe metal coins donated by Stonemaier Games. I'll be the struggling GM. PM me if you'd like to help!

Chris: We haven’t run a Scythe tournament, but I know of someone who has, and I know of others that will soon be run.

The first thing for you to decide is if it will be a teaching tournament or if it will be a non-teaching tournament (players have all played Scythe at least once before). If it's a teaching tournament, I think you'll want an extra round of play just for those who are learning, as the experienced players are going to have a much better experience (and much faster games) if they're not teaching new players.

The core of the tournament kind of depends on the number of players. I would aim for 4 to a table, and +/- 1 is fine. If you have 25 or fewer people, it would be a two-round tournament: 5 games in the first round, and the winner of each game participates in the final game. If you end up with fewer than 5 games in the first round, you could do a 4-player final or allow for a wild-card player (the player in the first round with the highest non-winning score, all tiebreakers still apply).

There is one note in the rulebook about tournament play: No trading. Everything else should remain the same, though I would take a cue from our FAQ and not allow Rusviet to be paired with the Industrial player mat.

As for Stonemaier support, we're interested in supporting tournaments by donating an accessory or two (like the metal coins) if the tournament is a teaching tournament or if Scythe and Scythe accessories are available for purchase to the participants (not necessarily at the tournament, but maybe from a vendor at the convention). There are certain games that are somewhat self-perpetuating due to a vast tournament system (like Magic), but our games are not, so we're looking for a more direct return on investment if we support them. I'm certainly open to peoples' opinions and insight about this.

Should I offer standard, random setup, or have bidding (with points) for favored setups? The objective is to reward skill, not luck.

What would you consider a 'lucky' setup?

Imho, a player's skill shows best if they're competent regardless which faction / player board they get.

Memorizing the opening moves and overall strategy of a single faction surely isn't indicative of skill?!

Statistics I'd be interested in is total # players, faction/board combinations in play, final score, and which player placed the 6th star.

OK, then. We'll do random setups, with the Rusviet player mat re-drawn if it turns out to be the industrial player mat. I'll create an editable stats collection spreadsheet for table use and results sharing, and post it here for use/refinement by other GM's.

The Rusviet raced to the factory, arriving at turn five, and got the trade popularity for mech/structure build card. He then raced around the board collecting five encounter tokens, much to the dismay of the other players. There were the usual grumblings about "overpowered card" of course, but this crew were super-cool about it. Because each encounter came with a free popularity boost, the shenanigans could continue.

Crimea played a development game, getting a sixth star when Rusviet attacked him in a calculated, "Hail Mary" play. Yeah, Crimea had a PAIR of fives. Sigh...Photos are final positions, except Rusviet had already cleared his player mat.

Chris: We haven’t run a Scythe tournament, but I know of someone who has, and I know of others that will soon be run.

The first thing for you to decide is if it will be a teaching tournament or if it will be a non-teaching tournament (players have all played Scythe at least once before). If it's a teaching tournament, I think you'll want an extra round of play just for those who are learning, as the experienced players are going to have a much better experience (and much faster games) if they're not teaching new players.

The core of the tournament kind of depends on the number of players. I would aim for 4 to a table, and +/- 1 is fine. If you have 25 or fewer people, it would be a two-round tournament: 5 games in the first round, and the winner of each game participates in the final game. If you end up with fewer than 5 games in the first round, you could do a 4-player final or allow for a wild-card player (the player in the first round with the highest non-winning score, all tiebreakers still apply).

There is one note in the rulebook about tournament play: No trading. Everything else should remain the same, though I would take a cue from our FAQ and not allow Rusviet to be paired with the Industrial player mat.

As for Stonemaier support, we're interested in supporting tournaments by donating an accessory or two (like the metal coins) if the tournament is a teaching tournament or if Scythe and Scythe accessories are available for purchase to the participants (not necessarily at the tournament, but maybe from a vendor at the convention). There are certain games that are somewhat self-perpetuating due to a vast tournament system (like Magic), but our games are not, so we're looking for a more direct return on investment if we support them. I'm certainly open to peoples' opinions and insight about this.

My game club organized a Scythe tournament in Barcelona last December during the city's DAU game fair. We had support from the Spanish reseller as well. We were not aware of these general guidelines, but I'm glad to say that we had quite a few of them in place, such as deciding beforehand if teaching the game on-site before starting the tournament was allowed (it was not), and limiting tables to 4 players in the qualifying round (participants were 16, i.e. four tables). We even had game referees to distribute resources and check achievements so that players could concentrate on playing and be sure that no mistakes were made. For the finals, the winner of each table and the best second overall qualified for a 5-player final game. We also applied the no-trading rule.

Overall it was a great success and the first of its class here in Spain (now I think that another tournament is being organized in Saragossa). If there is ever a World Tournament, we would certainly love to be part of it!

Three Ambassadors from the Stonemaier Game Ambassador program are running a 25 person 2 round tourney at The Gaming Hoopla Saturday April 8th, 2017 (Gurnee, IL - north of Chicago, south of Milwaukee).

Stonemaier Games has provided us with prize support if we net a few criteria - including a play to win session. We are running a "learn to play" session that Saturday morning as well for anyone who is in the tourney and needs a rules explanation and game under their belt. It also a chance to just run Scythe again.

We will post here with the results. Feel free to come out to compete. Check out www.gaminghoopla.com for all of the details and link to the over 100 (current) event page.